Patience, practice, perseverance……..That was my new years resolution this year. I didn’t come up with that on my own, though. It is what Mr. Jolden, my karate teacher, says whenever someone in the class is struggling. I’m not as good as some of the kids I started the class with but that’s not Mr. Jolden’s fault. Unlike some of them, I only take one class a week. I started going because dad said that spending all my free time practicing guitar and making videos wasn’t good for my health. He was right; I was looking kind of fat in the videos. Now I swim at the Y on Tuesdays and go back on Thursday for karate. With school and homework too, it seems like I never have enough time for everything.

That’s why last December I wasn’t very happy with the videos I had posted of holiday music. I had rushed so much to get them done that they were really just generic versions of the songs. The guitar solos were bland and the vocals, which were never my strong suit anyway, might almost have been done by a computer generated voice. There was nothing of me in them. That’s when I realized that Mr. Jolden’s wisdom applied to more than just karate. So I made them my new years resolution. More like very late December resolution since I announced it to my family on the twenty-eighth.

Originally, I just meant that I had to prepare better and wouldn’t post anything until I was sure it was the best work I could do; but Jan, my big sister, said that I should look at the overall effect of the videos too. She pointed out that I often edited them to show my finger work on the guitar, also showing my badly chewed up nails with once even some dirt under what was left of them. Like most fifteen year old boys I sometimes had pimples that seemed to be magnified by the camera. I got a haircut just before school started in September and again just before Thanksgiving as mom said I couldn’t go to grandma and grandpa’s looking like a bum. In between those those times I just washed it in the shower and kept it back with a sweatband when needed, like when I got going good on a guitar riff. Jan said that all of that kept me from having a professional looking video. She also thought that wearing whatever jeans I had worn to school that day and an old concert souvenir tee-shirt didn’t look I was serious. I wasn’t surprised when mom agreed with her but dad said that she was right, too.

So, for all of January and part of February I didn’t post any new videos. I worked on learning new songs, tried to write some songs and really worked hard on my playing, listening to and copying the riffs from some of the greats and then trying to change them on the fly enough to be my own. I listened a lot to the great jazz improvisers too. I would love to do with the guitar what John Coltrane did with his sax. One result of that was the song Patience, Practice, Perseverance. It is definitely in my own genre of indy-rock but the chanted chorus of those three words and the solo that precedes them is a deliberate tribute to “A Love Supreme”. I hoped it would be ready to record when I started streaming again.

I struggled to stop biting my nails, unconsciously doing it when I was stumped by a lyric or even just fretting over an essay for history class. Jan had agreed to be my image consultant. At first, that mostly meant some taking better care of my hair by using shampoo and conditioner instead of Dial soap. She also got me to brush it every day. It helped when Samantha, my biology lab partner, commented on how much nicer my hair looked. The bar of Dial was also supplemented by a jar of Noxzema skin cream for washing my face. Jan said it “might” help with the pimples. After two weeks she took me to a hair stylist. I came out of there with a more layered look (Jan’s description) that would hold up well to my guitar playing without flying all over. I still needed the sweat band to be protect my eyes and the stylist took that into account. What Jan sprang on me after I was in the chair was that I also got a manicure with acrylic nails. They weren’t long or anything and just natural color. She said to just keep in mind how much they cost before I started chewing. She also set up appointments every two weeks to maintain my new look.

I had to admit that the new look was better when I recorded a session just to check it out. As a bonus I somehow found the right words for the second verse of Patience, Practice, Perseverance that had been eluding me while I was playing it for that recording. I also got my buddy Al to come in and play his harmonica on an arrangement of Bill Withers’ song “Lean on Me” where I did a bluesy improvised solo. I wanted him to see the results of the changes on the video. He agreed to dress up more for when we did the song for u-tube. It would be the first thing I posted when I started doing videos again and had the most hits of anything I’d done until then. It also got me my first offers for sponsorship.

I kept on practicing as the weeks went by but it was my patience and perseverance that really got tested in the last half of January. Mom decided to help Jan with finding a me a new performance wardrobe. Shopping for clothes with two women should be against the Geneva convention. I spent hours that could have been used to practice on my guitar walking up and down three different malls, looking in windows, trying on clothes and waiting while they both tried on things. The only thing we bought for me the first week was a pair of sweatbands to replace the ones I had that were looking a bit tattered. I argued that they gave a certain rock vibe by their very raggedness but Jan reminded me that I agreed to listen to her about my image. As a compromise, I kept the old ones but agreed to wear the new ones for recording. The rest of that week was spent figuring out my “look.” Mom kept saying something about “like Justin Bieber. Look how successful he was”. Fortunately, as my official image consultant, Jan was as revolted by that idea as I was.

Jan said that she didn’t want to change who I appeared to be, just clean up the look and also take advantage of how my body looked now that I was exercising twice a week. The second week we went back to the malls and I tried on some of the same things again as well as some new ones. It would have gone a lot faster if we didn’t have to spend just as much time in the woman’s stores as we did the first week. Mom and Jan don’t waste a shopping opportunity! For all of that shopping in clothing stores, the first purchase was made at the music store. I just went in for some new strings when I saw the rack of novelty tees. I didn’t even check with Jan. I had to wear this shirt if it caused a riot. I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t, but who could resist. Under pictures of Les Paul, Chet Atkins and Jimi Hendricks it had bold lettering saying THE HOLY TRINITY. That shirt set the style of my new wardrobe. We were dressing a guitar crazy kid. We got a couple more pairs of jeans so I would always have nicely pressed pair to record in and a couple of tight tee-shirts to show off my arms and pecs while incidentally not being too hot under my recording lights. We got a couple of polo shirts, one of which had a treble clef on the pocket and the other just plain blue that mom liked because it went with my eyes. I could still wear some of the band shirts if they were in good shape. I’m kind of hard on my shoes. Jan said I couldn’t wear my beat up cross trainers but I don’t like stiff heavy shoes or boots. We ended up getting new Nikes that would only be worn for performances and kept clean.

Then both women went crazy. I thought we had everything. It turns out that we were only half done. I never even heard of the idea of accessories. I had one belt that I moved from one pair of pants to another as I changed clothes. Now Jan said I could keep my look fresh by changing accessories. We did find a belt with a cool guitar buckle and another engraved with “Give peace a chance.” In the goodwill store Jan found a wide leather man’s wristband with what appeared to be a genuine antique silver peso coin in the center. She thought it would look good in the close-ups of my hands. Mom spotted a cool watch with a wooden face that I could wear in other videos. An inexpensive nickle ID bracelet offered another option. Jan wanted to get several cheap rings and change them for each video but I just wanted one, a gold ring with a black onyx stone. I wanted consistency on my hands when I’m playing. I think that’s the only argument I won that week.

I sort of won another one, or at least Jan did. Mom finally agreed to let me get my ears pierced. She’d been saying “no” ever since I first brought it up last summer. Jan convinced her that I should have a few sets of studs so they could be changed for different looks. Mom turned around completely. She must have held a hundred studs and small rings up to face in order to find the three pair we got. We combined those with the gold chain I got for Christmas from my grandparents. Actually, I wore the chain all the time except in Karate class where no loose jewelry was allowed but Jan agreed it made my image in the videos classier. That completed my new look.

Almost! I was still getting some occasional pimples, though Jan thought it was less often since using the Noxzema skin cream. To cap off the two weeks of shopping torture I was dragged to the cosmetics counter to have various brands and colors of concealer held up to my face in search of a perfect match. Later, Jan showed me how to blend it in and brush it over with powder so it didn’t show.

The first two weeks of February I got so wrapped up in my guitar that dad put his foot down. I had to stop long enough to eat meals at the table. I had to spend at least a half hour after that doing something other than homework or music and be in bed by eleven on school nights. He also brought home a big plywood cutout of my guitar he’d made for a background in my videos. We hung it in the rec room where I recorded. I could hear the improvement in my playing from the intense practice and almost just wanted to keep doing that. But I knew it was time to perform. I called Al and we did the “Lean on Me” video live after only a couple of run-throughs. I returned the favor by playing lead guitar and singing on Muddy Water’s “Baby, Please Don’t Go” so he could play the Little Walter harmonica part. We ended up posting that to u-tube, too.

After all of that shopping, it was ironic that my big breakthrough recording was made wearing a karate Gi. By April, with the success of “Lean on me” and a couple of other covers I was ready to do one of my own songs. I wanted to do Patience, Practice, Perseverance or the three Ps as I was calling it in my head. First, I wanted to talk to Mr. Jolden. I felt he should get co-writer credit on the lyrics and I wanted to talk before the song about those words and where I heard them. That lead to another idea.

Mr. Jolden didn’t want any songwriting credit, saying that the words weren’t lyrics until I made them be. He wasn’t so sure about my other idea. He’d never heard “A Love Supreme” since he mostly listens to country music. He was happier with the idea after I played it for him and showed him the proposed script where I talked about how John Coltrane continued a heavy practice schedule even when he was the greatest saxophonist of his generation and about hearing Mr. Jolden say those words and applying them to to my music as well as karate. He knew then that I wasn’t trying to make myself out as a karate expert or exploit my limited skills.

Two weeks later we recorded Patience, Practice, Perseverance at the Y with dad on the camera and my karate class as a live audience. I had already recorded my opening monologue for the video to splice in later but did it again anyway and ended up keeping it. Then I stepped onto the mat and bowed to Mr. Jolden who spoke those three words as he had so often. I began playing as soon as he finished speaking. This is a high school aged class but I was able to recruit four guys with deeper than average voices to chant the three words on my signal which was pointing my right foot at them below the camera range as I finished the solo. Getting the timing on that down actually took some practice but the guys had worked hard for just chips and soda the first session and frozen pizza the next time. I was pleasantly surprised by the acoustics of the gym. I had feared that I would have to record the song again at home and dub it over the video. The song ended with me turning back to Mr. Jolden and bowing again before leaving mat

I ended up with an almost six minute video including the monologue and some of the applause which I faded out to end the video. It’s been viewed over a million and a half times and the audio version has done well on the streaming services. We advertised me playing it live at Mr. Jolden’s next open house recruiting demo at the Y and he had the best turnout and most new students ever. It’s opened up a lot of opportunities for me, too. I just need to work out what’s best for my long term goals. So, Patience, Practice, Perseverance.